"Countless hours of hard work, hectoliters of coffee, tons of improvements, two version numbers skipped, and here it is: the all-new Opera for desktop is now out as an Opera Next version, Opera's channel for what used to be called beta. Made from scratch, this version is available for Windows and Mac and brings a new, elegant design and a bunch of new features that will make your browsing experience sleeker and easier than ever." The first version using something called 'Chromium's engine' - I guess they can't call it WebKit anymore, but they can't call it Blink yet either. It's looking great, but the bookmark functionality seems to not have been implemented yet in this preview

Yes, it is the end of an era, but the beginning of other one. Let's no blame Opera until we will see what they will bring us in the future.

We all can see what their plan is. Base your browser on Chromium so you have a fast browser without any risk. Add a few features that make you browser 'unique'. They will of course lose most Opera 12 users that went with Opera because of the innovative features. They will gain Chrome users that like the new features they implement.
Overall a low risk solution for Opera.

I wonder how much Opera will still be a player in building the internet like they did with CSS.